Welcome to the new Sight Unseen, a weekly newsletter that delivers the best of the design world — news, trends, shopping advice, interviews, travel recs, and more — straight to your inbox. If you’re not subscribed, follow this link to sign up. Want to partner with us, advertise, or submit your work? Email us at hello@sightunseen.com!

A Late Summer Exhibition Fueled — Quite Literally — By the Sun

Soft Baroque debuted its Beaten to a Pulp series (bottom) at Uppercut Gallery’s late summer exhibition, held at a chateau in Bruges. Photos: Tom Dagnas

Here at Sight Unseen, we take summer seriously — so much so that for the last few years, we’ve been taking a cue from our European counterparts and going on editorial hiatus for all or part of August. But a recent exhibition by the Antwerp-based gallery Uppercut, held at a castle in Bruges, turns the idea of summer’s “dog days” on its head, using their lazy cadence as a catalyst for creativity. “Borrowing its title from the ancient phrase, which refers to the sultry stretch of late summer when Sirius — the Dog Star — rises with the sun, Dog Days is a celebration of languid creativity, subtle rebellion, and the art of taking it easy.” The exhibition features works by Carsten in der Elst, Illya Goldman Gubin, Moreno Schweikle, and André Jacob. But the most intriguing pieces are a lamp and cupboard from Soft Baroque’s Beaten to a Pulp series. Made from MDF and chipboard, the works feature a raised harlequin pattern that’s made from masking off the decorative motifs and exposing them to steam and moisture, allowing them to soften and swell. The embossed areas resemble tanlines or the blisters of a sunburn — a tattooed reminder of the sticky, perilous nature of the season.

This Parisian Microapartment Channels 1950s Glam

Ice cream pastels and chrome accents add to the elevated diner vibe of this 650-square-foot apartment by Atelier HA. Photo: Yannick Labrousse

The Parisian interior design studio Atelier HA, founded by Hugo Vince and Adèle Nourry, recently completed the renovation of a 650-square-foot apartment that’s a master class in how a highly specific palette can cement point of view in even the smallest of spaces. The kitchen is the star here. With its chrome accents, Neapolitan pastels, and high-gloss red lacquer recalling the vinyl of a diner banquette, the tiny space radiates elevated ‘50s retro. A graphic tile pattern sets the tone, while red lacquered cabinets, featuring a peach bullnose trim, and vintage black-framed stools fill out the space. Lacquered pendants, custom made by Atelier Ha, poke from the ceiling like Pop-Art immersion blenders, and the space gets a further injection of personality from styling pieces like a silver-plated Ananas Ananas serving dish, an Art Deco cocktail shaker, and a vintage ceramic bust sourced from Saint-Ouen. In the living room, the designers made subtle shifts to move things into a more ‘70s-inspired realm: a mirrored wall and ceiling beams, floor-to-ceiling curtains, a kelly green vintage floor lamp and coffee table, along with a Giampiero Vitelli armchair, a slouchy Cinna sofa, and a stool by Lukas Cober — the kind of contemporary piece that can slip easily into any decade.

Beer Helmets and Brass Takeaway Cups: This Exhibition Turns Dining Rituals into Art

Date Night Device by Brecht Wright Gander and Georgia B. Smith (left) and steel Vessel/Bowl by Brendan Timmins (right). Photos: Alec Kugler

A delightfully bizarre exhibition debuted at Driveway gallery in the Rockaways a few weeks ago and is now on view at Collectible: Called Table Top, the show is curated by Allan Wexler and Michael Yarinsky of Office of Tangible Space, and it showcases works that invent new, sometimes strange rituals around our consumption of food. Among the items created for the show are a takeaway cup rendered in ornate cast brass by Suna Bonametti; Carson Terry’s spoon to facilitate a post-prandial smoke break, with a built-in cigarette holder; a multi-cup device by Ellen Pong that calls to mind a beer helmet and invokes the tradition of creating a soda fountain “suicide”; a Surrealist spaghetti tableau by Brecht Wright Gander and Georgia B. Smith; and a Tim Burton–esque piece with institutional vibes by Brendan Timmins where the stainless-steel bowl is a table, the utensils are your fellow diners, and you are the guest. Table Top was inspired by A New Futurist Cookbook — a project and publication conceived by Wexler and Yarinsky as a response to the 1932 Futurist Cookbook — for which the two designers are documenting experimental pop-up dinners around New York City. Table Top’s brief to designers was simple: to explore the culinary concerns of our time, including “fostering an awareness of food systems, finding new forms of interpersonal connection, and elevating the act of dining into an intellectual, spiritual, and narrative experience.”

The 18th-Century Trend That’s Suddenly Everywhere

The shell-encrusted bar at Le Dorian, the iconic Swiss brasserie recently re-envisioned by YKRA. Photo: Alicia Dubuis

Is rocaille on the verge of having a moment? The ornamental shell motif, which has its roots in French 18th-century decorative arts, has been popping up lately in unexpected places: first on a shell-encrusted door leading to the bedroom of a Charlap Hyman & Herrero–designed high-rise apartment in Miami, and now covering the tiered bar base at Le Dorian, a brasserie in Geneva recently revitalized by Swiss architects YKRA. Despite the seashell’s recent ubiquity in decor, something about this maximalist application feels extremely fresh. (Out: shell-shaped catchalls / In: slathering your whole wall with whelk remains.) At Le Dorian, the grotto-inspired bar is paired with drawings by tattooist Pedro Sassi and mosaics by artist Mathilde Herrero as the more expressive touches alongside quieter details like cornices and moldings and sleek furniture additions like chrome lamps by Axel Chay. It’s a nice way to temper the exuberance of rocaille, but if you wanted to go whole hog, we wouldn’t dissuade you!

Why This Weekend’s Collectible Fair Should Be On Your Calendar

The Bells & Whistles collection by Kiki Goti, on view with Mexico City–based gallery Toro Manifesto at Collectible, September 4-7 at 180 Maiden Lane in New York City. Photo: Gabriel Orozco

The Collectible fair returns for its second outing in New York this week, and if you haven’t purchased a ticket yet, may we recommend that you do so here? Taking place this year in the new WSA space at 180 Maiden Lane — a very good 1980s-era skyscraper in the Financial District that gives off a Kevin Roche vibe — the New York edition features more than 120 exhibitors, plus weekend-long programming that includes a talk on media’s new garde, moderated by yours truly. We’re particularly looking forward to In Praise of Folly, an exhibition curated by Architectural Digest’s Hannah Martin and designed by Cat Snodgrass of Bi-Rite, celebrating design’s more whimsical side; Michael Hilal’s “Vignette” section, where interior designers will pair contemporary pieces with vintage and antiques; and the New Garde section, which highlights designers and galleries who have been operating for fewer than three years, including Mexico City’s Toro Manifesto, showing the Kiki Goti collection above. Collectible’s talks program is excellent this year; at my panel, I’ll be chatting with Dan Rosen, Emma Chozick of gr8 Collab, Matt Starr of Dream Baby Press, and former Paper editor Justin Moran about how they use their platforms to decode design and culture, why their content resonates, and what the new role of media is in today’s landscape. Please join us!

Editor’s List

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT:

—
Have we all been sleeping on Pierre Yovanovitch’s e-shop? It’s a well-curated smattering of vintage objects, books, and contemporary editions like this marbled plate by Atelier Sylvie Saint André Perrin, which reminds me of Isabel Rower’s equally perfect plates for Galerie Sardine.
—
One of our fave vintage dealers, Toby Ziff of Two Poems in London, released his first contemporary edition this summer — a concrete and steel candleholder made in collaboration with Arthur de Borman. Thanks to a counterbalanced weight, the flame slowly rises as evening descends and the candle burns down, becoming lighter.
—
I will never understand why some of the more established design brands don’t have e-shops — or better retail accounts — for their small objects. This recently reissued 1985 Curculia bowl by Alessandro Mendini for Zanotta should be at Bergdorf’s, but it’s not; if you can find it, it’s the perfect splash of Postmodernism.
—
I’m currently awaiting a piece I commissioned from Jessi Burch, who is not only one of our favorite jewelers and designers, but also one of our favorite IG follows. Her feed recently introduced me to this epic 1983 tea set by Norwegian designer Ragnar Hansen.

News

Drawer Box Chair by Josh Josué da Silva and Tissue Box by Maia Lutteral, part of Big Box Store, presented by Works Cited in LA last month.

—
The designers behind Berghain, everyone’s favorite Berlin nightclub, have designed a Kreuzberg apartment inspired by the club’s famed industrial aesthetic. Considering this translates to lots of glass blocks and stainless steel cabinetry — both of which are everywhere these days — we can’t help but wonder: Is Berghain the most influential interior of the past 20 years?
—
Are you in the market for a wall-mounted cabinet that looks like a tissue box? How about a heart-pine chair with a sliding drawer? The Big Box Store exhibition at Works Cited in LA earlier last month (above) still has several great works for sale.
—
Everyone’s favorite dinner party store Big Night recently debuted a collab with Bauer Pottery to release several pieces from the Russel Wright dishware series in four colors: chartreuse, butter yellow, blue, and an exclusive cherry red. My grandmother had this service growing up in dove grey, so I’m particularly psyched to see it make a comeback.
—
A long-overdue English translation of the 1968 Bruno Munari book Design and Visual Communication is available for pre-order now from Inventory Press. Huge Munari fans over here; the most diehard heads among you will remember a 2010 exhibition Sight Unseen did, inspired by Munari’s idea of “useless machines.”
—
The Clare V. x Schoolhouse collection, a sneakily great collab last fall, is back with a restock of previously sold out items and new colors. A glossy ecru metal floor lamp with Ingo Maurer–meets–Mategot vibes is back, as is a new raisin hue for the cast-metal catch-all that sits on my credenza.
—
No one is working as hard as LA-based artist Lily Clark to make fountains and birdbaths cool. Her site-specific installation at Antica Terra winery in Portland, curated by Marta gallery, is now closed but it’s worth taking a look at the photos!

Jobs

Sight Unseen has launched a jobs board! We’re inviting employers to post opportunities in any creative field, and we’ll include spotlight three featured listings in each weekly newsletter.

To kick things off, for the month of September, you’ll pay only $1 per job listing.

Follow this link to get started!